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Monsieur Stoic is out of town. He’s in Miami doing hookers and blow with his brother watching the Atlanta Braves play the Florida Marlins and trying not to get struck by lightening. So while he’s off partying like it’s 1999 hanging with his Wombmate in a sub tropical locale, I’m getting destroyed by the Terror Tag Team. But fair’s fair, because I took off with my best friend in June to bake and play tourist on the Oregon Coast.

(I should probably come up with a pseudonym for her soon. Hmmm.)

Normally, it wouldn’t be *that* big a deal to be outnumbered. I mean, yeah, these kids are a handful. Future Cult Leader by herself is relentless, especially after the Ritalin wears off. And Evil Genius is 2, okay? Two. Do you know what they say about the twos? They say that they’re terrible. And while Evil Genius’s 2s aren’t nearly as bad as some other 2s I’ve seen, she’s still 2. What do you get when you put a 2 year old and a post-Ritalin 6 year old together? Let me put it this way: if the child-adult ratio is 2:1 for longer than 12 hours, my house will start to resemble Vancouver after the Canucks lose the Stanley Cup. But while my kids have a difficulty level somewhere between hard and expert, I’m used to the chaos and don’t usually mind the mess. I could do without the violence, though. I’m also smug enough to say that parents with kids that are mellow would probably be full blown alcoholics when confronted with my kids; I only need a daily pot of coffee, weekly therapy appointments, and a handful of psychotropic drugs to get through the day. (Oh, wait…)

Now, let’s add a few ingredients to the mix. First off, Evil Genius has a yeast infection in her mouth. She can’t eat, isn’t sleeping well because she no longer has her pacifier to fall back on, is super clingy, and just randomly bursts into tears because “Mama, mouth owwwwwwww”. Second off, I can’t bliss out on my Ambien with Stoic gone. The night he left, my insomnia showed up at my front door with a couple of kegs, a bunch of E, some glow sticks, and 200 of its closest friends. Third, Stoic’s absence is a disruption in Cult Leader’s life. She doesn’t like disruptions. And that was what we call an understatement.

So. To review: 6 year old who comes home from day camp just as her stimulant drug wears off. Super pissed all the time because we moved an object to the left a little and won’t let her change it back. Terrible twos with a mouth plague that’s taken her drug away from her without the help of methadone; becomes incapacitated when not clinging to her mother’s neck. I’m “it” but my own severe sleep deprivation tends to mean I Lose My Shit, but I can’t Lose My Shit because I’m being held captive and tortured by the Terror Tag Team and the moment I blink the terrorists win.

If I don’t make it out alive and intact: I’ve had a hell of a run. And can someone do me a favor and burn all those old journals from high school for me? Those don’t really need to be floating around once I’m gone.

If you haven’t been living under a rock, then you’ve heard of the bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach. If you have been living under a rock, you can listen to Samuel L. Jackson make love to the words until it’s taken down for copyright violation:

Story of my damn life.

Everyone knows that you don’t sleep with a newborn in the house. Honestly, they should have a warning that pops up after that second pink line on the pee stick comes up.

(Why is it pink?!)

WARNING: YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN. YEAH, THE INFANT PHASE SUCKS AND YOU WILL PROBABLY BE A WALKING ZOMBIE FOR THE FIRST 3 TO 6 MONTHS. BUT THE TRUTH IS, THE NEXT TIME YOU WILL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT YOUR BODY WILL BE TOO OLD TO ENJOY IT BECAUSE YOU WILL BE WAKING UP EVERY 2 HOURS WITH ACHY JOINTS, A FULL BLADDER, AND SCIATICA FROM HELL.

If you’re like the other uptight pricks out there, you’re thinking gee, if you hate your kids so much, why did you have them? Who said anything about hating my kids? I freaking love my kids! I just want them to sleep, for the love of brown rice, sleep! Here’s the thing. If I don’t get enough sleep, I Lose My Shit. My kids? They don’t like to sleep. The Future Cult Leader was a great sleeper as an infant, but as she’s grown into her disorder she’s come up with insomnia. The other night? Fourteen visits upstairs. And before you go saying I must be letting my child walk all over me, let me say this: military style torture would not have broken this kid. Evil Genius didn’t sleep for her first 6 months (thanks, reflux!), and even after that we were lucky to catch a 4 hour stretch. Even now, after almost 2 years of life, there are nights she wakes up 10 times. And early. Oh god. Those two are a terror tag team of pre-dawn waking. Both of them need 11-12 hours, and when they don’t get that, they tend to Lose Their Shit. If I haven’t slept and they haven’t slept, then all three of us are Losing Our Shit.

The last few days, Monsieur Stoic’s family has been Without Their Shit. Cult Leader defiantly refuses to sleep, Evil Genius has a hacking cough that wakes her up every 2 hours, and I’m in the middle of a psychiatric med switch so YAY! my sleep aid is no match for the adjustment period. Lucky for us, Monsieur Stoic can clean the house, do his work, play with the kids, run the errands, cook a meal, seduce me, and mow the yard on 5 hours of sleep, all without smudging his lipstick. It sucks, though, because then his family is hanging out and they’re all shitless.

Honestly, the man deserves an award for not Losing His Own Shit.

I like coffee. I drink it a lot. I drink about a pot a day, which some people, like my therapist, say is too much. But you know what? It’s entirely possible that coffee is what’s holding my marriage together during these shitless days. You can take my coffee…but you’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead, shitless hands.